Leonardo Di Caprio and Tom Hanks engage in a game of cat and mouse in the real-life crime drama Catch Me If You Can. Frank Abagnale, Jr. (Leonardo Di Caprio) worked as a doctor, a lawyer and as a co-pilot for a major airline - all before his 18th birthday. A master of deception, he was also a brilliant forger, whose skill gave him his first real claim to fame: at the age of 17, Frank Abagnale, Jr. became the most successful bank robber in the history of the United States.
What sounds like the high-concept romantic comedy pitch from hell--widower president falls for smart lobbyist while the world watches--is actually intelligent, charming, touching, and quite funny. Granted, it's wish fulfillment all the way (when was the last time you saw a president who was truly presidential?), but in the capable hands of writer Aaron Sorkin (TV's Sports Night) and director Rob Reiner, The American President is incredibly enjoyable entertainment with quite a few ideas about both romance and the government.
In the tradition of such obsessively driven directors as Erich von Stroheim and Werner Herzog, Francis Ford Coppola approached the production of Apocalypse Now as if it were his own epic mission into the heart of darkness. On location in the storm-ravaged Philippines, he quite literally went mad as the project threatened to devour him in a vortex of creative despair, but from this insanity came one of the greatest films ever made.
