Vincent Bugliosi's Helter Skelter is the best true crime book ever written. You may hear a lot about Tom Cruise, John Travolta, and Scientology, but Charles Manson came way, way before them and borrowed a lot from its teachings via The Process. The result is two nights of Helter Skelter that disturbed everybody afterwards.

Richard Brooks' In Cold Blood is more or less a faithful adaptation without too much divergence from the truth. The first thirty minutes is beautifully shot, especially in black and white. Not to miss is when Robert Blake told a story next to the rainy window at the end. Moreover, the filming took place at authentic locations including Clutter's house and the courtroom where the two men were tried, found guilty, and sentenced to death; it definitely gives the feel of being there.

The book about the Onion Field murder case has been captured detail for detail, right down to the cars and locations, in this film, thanks to the author's insistence of keeping the truth intact. It's one of the, if not the, most accurate true crime movies ever shot. Yes, it's slow-paced and can deviate a lot from time to time but is uniformly excellent and meticulously crafted.

JFK is an incredible masterpiece, representing Oliver Stone's best. Outstanding are the acting, storytelling, and, most of all, editing. The best moment is when Jim Garrison, after learning the real plot from Donald Sutherland's character, summed up the startling discovery by saying, "The size of this is...beyond me."

Without doubt, Goodfellas is the hardest-hitting Mafia picture made. There's nothing like it. The first two minutes, complemented by Saul Bass' titles, is what sets the tone for the rest of the film. In order to get Goodfellas made, Martin Scorsese called Nicholas Pileggi, the author of Wiseguy, to say, "I've been waiting for this book my entire life," which was met with "I've been waiting for this phone call my entire life."

Shot on location in Hungary, Citizen X is the story of how an infamous serial killer was captured in the USSR which took many years due to bureaucrats and limitations in technology and manpower. What's not revealed is after investigating over 150,000 citizens, the authorities incidently solved more than 1,000 unrelated crimes including 95 murder and 245 rape cases. Now, that's what you call "looking at the bright side of a negative situation."

Based on a true and bizarre story, Dog Day Afternoon is everything you can possibly ask for in a human drama picture. For the final of his four straight Oscar nominations during the 70's, Al Pacino turns in one of the greatest performances of his career as Sonny Wortzik. Chris Sarandon is also outstanding, having been Oscar-nominated.

Ever heard of the word "overcharged"? Then, look no further than Indictment: The McMartin Trial. Over 300 charges were filed against the accused for child abuse at their family-run daycare. They were tried for seven years, and the state spent over $15 million on the case. Not one person was found guilty of a single charge, making it the longest and most expensive case in American history.

You won't see a better performance by Tommy Lee Jones in any other film. Exceptionally strong is Rosanna Arquette as his character's prurient girlfriend. Heightened by Waylon Jennings' music and Freddie Francis' cinematography, the stark realism is duly noted by the ending which is reminiscent of the hanging scene in In Cold Blood. But this time, it's done by a firing squad.

There's no question that A Cry in the Dark is an all-time great classic that shows the truth can sometimes be stranger than fiction. In fact, it would've been good fodder for Arthur Conan Doyle while coming up with a new Sherlock Holmes story. Well, yeah...this is the film with the famous quote: "The dingo took my baby!"

Buoyed by Hilary Swank's Oscar-winning performance, Boys Don't Cry is one of the most important films about hate crime. While watching her play Brandon, I actually believed she was a he. Thanks to the cast, most especially Chloë Sevigny, it's a well-played masterpiece from start to finish with a superbly handled direction by Kimberly Peirce.

Because of his "personality of a pimp," Eric Roberts is captivating in Star 80 by giving the performance of his career. Unbelievably, how was he not nominated for an Oscar, let alone win it? I don't think there will be a better or more realistic characterization of somebody with bipolar behavior that's taken to the extreme. By all accounts, Eric Roberts' portrayal of Paul Snider was "right on the money."

The Deliberate Stranger presents a highly fascinating story about Ted Bundy. Several actors may be famously associated with a character in spite of giving an okay/fair performance, and that's what happened to Mark Harmon here. Hence, it's difficult to separate these two. Remember the movie came out in 1986 and Ted Bundy was still alive. By all accounts, he refused to see it. Just right before he was electrocuted in 1989, a lot of new information came out which explained how he killed, his modus operandi, and what he did afterwards.

Based on the true story of Francine Hughes, The Burning Bed is a motion picture example of battered woman syndrome. With that being said, it's not an easy watch, even for 75 million people when it was first aired on television in 1984. If The Burning Bed was theatrically released instead, Farrah Fawcett should've gotten an Oscar, and it's the best performance of her career. I'm not going to see a better description of an abused wife.

A lot of times, a film says at the beginning this is a true story and then never lives up to the promise. That's not so for The Falcon and the Snowman. Just about everything matches up, which is hard to believe, because how it happened doesn't feel substantial enough. Timothy Hutton and Sean Pean are perfect with the latter giving the best performance of the show.

Do you want to see one of the most unusual pictures about a serial killer couple? Then, check out The Honeymoon Killers. Its tagline reads: "Ray and Martha are in love. They're on a honeymoon. (The bride is in the trunk.)" Tony Lo Bianco and Shirley Stoler will be forever remembered as Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck, aka "The Lonely Hearts Killers," who may have murdered at most twenty women during the late 40's before being executed in their 30's.

Al Pacino gives one of the finest performances of his career as Frank Serpico, a real-life NYPD cop who defied a corrupt system. Director Sidney Lumet shoots the film in docu-realism by going inside police precincts to see how things work on both sides. Serpico is broken down into three acts: the eponymous character's desire to be a cop, the moment he's awarded the gold shield, and the ending when he's all alone with his sheepdog.

Julia Roberts earned the Oscar for Best Actress. How much of what's shown in the film is true? It turns out to be nearly everything. Even the real Erin Brockovich called it "98% accurate." Simply put, the movie is better when Julia Roberts stops being a bitch with an attitude and starts gathering facts about what's happening to residents of the town. During this process, Ed Masry begins to see Erin's worth through how she works with them.

Path to Paradise tells a chilling story of how the bombing happened at the World Trade Center in 1993. Even more chilling is the final line of the film: "Next time, we'll bring them both down." It was actually said by the mastermind bomber himself which did eventually happen...four years after the film was made.

Not Without My Daughter is a scary movie. So, I must ask Betty Mahmoody: "WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING?" However, I can understand her position which was between a rock and a hard place. But it's a very bad decision she made from the outset, no matter what. Anyway, the acting is top-notch and holds up well. All the thespians play their parts to perfection. It's almost like being there.

Because of the full range of colors, Bonnie and Clyde is a beautifully photographed film with impeccable acting performances. Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway have chemistry that's impossible to duplicate. Their violent ending is unforgettable as well.

One day, Sunny von Bülow, a wealthy Manhattan-Rhode Island socialite, slipped into a coma for the second time a year after her first, never waking up again. Her husband, Claus, was convicted of attempted murder by insulin overdose only to be fully acquitted in a successful appeal due to Sunny's self-administered overdose of barbiturates along with a combination of other drugs and food she ingested.

Before there was David Koresh and before there was Charles Manson, there was Jim Jones. Remember that he founded the Peoples Temple in 1955. His cult kept growing and moved around from Indianapolis to San Francisco and then finally Guyana, a South American country to the east of Venezuela. At first, it started off with good intentions, but Jim Jones decided to be selfish and became a demigod. The result is a mass murder-suicide of 918 people on November 18, 1978.

Andy Griffith...Johnny Cash...two black men carrying a dead body that's wrapped in burlap blanket along the pole...Murder in Coweta County. Spooky stuff. Based on the book by Margaret Anne Barnes, the film is as Southern as it gets and pretty gothic at that, too. Solid police work makes for a straightforward case.

As a teacher to Johnny Depp, Al Pacino has moments of brilliance. It's the way he talks and how the lines roll off his tongue. The screenplay is authentic as most of it was taken from actual wiretaps, hence the film's sole Oscar nomination. Joseph D. Pistone deemed everything to be "85% accurate" and wasn't able to see his family for over two years.

Eight Men Out is the story of the most infamous chapter in professional baseball history: the Chicago Black Sox's throwing of the 1919 World Series. The film is accurate for the most part except for one thing: the über famous quote "Say it ain't so, Joe" never happened. Regardless, Shoeless Joe Jackson, who currently holds the third highest batting average ever, should be in Cooperstown. It's time to move on.

Making their screen debuts, Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey are almost like James Stewart and Farley Granger in Rope. What's perfect, which is the point of Peter Jackson showing everybody that he got it, is Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme being so wrapped up in their fantasy world that they've become delusional, hence the exaggerated expressions and feelings of romanticism.

10 Rillington Place is a very British movie about a serial killer named John Christie, and the information presented matches the facts most of the time. Filmed at actual locations, it's rare for playing a role in Britain's abolishment of the death penalty. The hanging scene of Timothy Evans is impressive for being so sudden. Stuart Freeborn and Joan White have done a masterful job with Richard Attenborough's face.

If that's how it went down, then the U.S. government agents are guilty of two murders. I didn't see any provocation from the Weavers' side. They had guns and were on their land which is protected by the Second Amendment. The camouflaged recon team of six U.S. Marshals didn't make a fair signal to show why they're there or what their intentions were. To this day, the true version of the initial encounter remains unknown.

The biggest mistake Lloyd Price ever made was hooking Don King up with Muhammad Ali. That's how his career as a boxing promoter got started, leading to the most famous fight ever: Ali-Foreman aka "The Rumble in the Jungle" which is covered extensively in a documentary film called When We Were Kings. Afterwards, Don King made a living in screwing just about every boxer he represented, and many went on to sue him. As for Ving Rhames, he has done an excellent job playing the man himself.

The only red flag in this Mapplethorpe controversy is child nudity. When is it casual, when is it art, and when is it pornography? That's for you to find out in Dirty Pictures. The primary discussion is First Amendment rights while censorship is a major issue that's a no-no in the United States of America.

Escape from Alcatraz is a tightly made film about Frank Morris' escape from the most famous prison in history. Even better, it features another collaboration between Don Siegal and Clint Eastwood. There's no required characterization or development of the players involved because it's all about the escape and how Frank Morris did it.

Ghosts of Mississippi is the story of justice for civil rights activist Medgar Evers' assassination and is a great history lesson. When I say the last part, Rob Reiner actually followed the events as they happened. So, kudos to him for doing that, a rarity in Hollywood films. Matthew Mungle and Deborah La Mia Denaver were rewarded with an Oscar nomination for James Woods' makeup work.

"What motion picture won the Academy Award for 1955?" That's the question Herb Stempel will have to live with forever. Often cited as his favorite movie, he feigned not knowing the answer to the question: Marty. That was the beginning of the end of Twenty-One, one of the many rigged game shows that occurred on television during the 50's.

Black residents were lynched. The state government of Florida knew about the incident but did nothing about it. The town was never rebuilt, and no black residents talked about what happened until the 1980's, hence Rosewood. Filled with great acting, it's a rare film about the dark history of racism that existed in the United States for hundreds of years.

Dead Man Walking isn't about changing people's minds about capital punishment but rather offers a realistic yet neutral insight into how the death sentence is carried out at the Louisiana State Penitentiary. There are many powerful scenes with exceptional performances by Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon.

Accurate for the most part about an improper student-teacher relationship, Indecent Seduction is based on what happened in Taylor, Texas, during 1986-87, and the teacher-coach's name was Jesse Lynn Stroud, who now lives in Holland, Texas, as a registered sex offender for life, while the principal (Eddy Lankford) and the superintendent (Mike Caplinger) looked the other way repeatedly.

Casino is the third film by Martin Scorsese featuring Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Frank Vincent, among others. Obviously, it's a repeat of Goodfellas in terms of style. Yet Robert Richardson's cinematography is top-notch with quality writing, and there are some strong scenes. The attention is often on Ace Rothstein, resulting in vintage Robert De Niro moments.

What's one possible way for narcs to catch drug dealers? Simple! Do what the addicts do: inject drugs into their bodies. What an amazing concept. Of course, the theory will never work, but that's what happened in Rush. It's based on Kim Wozencraft's book which happened to her while working undercover in Tyler, Texas. She manufactured evidence in almost 200 drug cases, was found guilty of perjury and civil rights violations, and got sentenced 1.5 years in federal prison.

How do students prepare to defend themselves against accusations of academic cheating? Simple: they watch Stand and Deliver and take notes. It's the most perfect "aha" moment out of many in Cheaters. The movie is the best when it comes to academic fraud, and the strategies used to get ahead are pretty much spot-on.