John F. Kennedy lived long enough to see this Hollywood account of his Navy career and his heroism following a ruthless attack by a Japanese ship on his small patrol craft. Cliff Robertson is an amiable choice to play Kennedy, though one won't find a lot of the late president's mannerisms in his performance. The key battle sequence, which finds Kennedy and his crew bloodied and battered while trying to stay alive in shark-infested waters, makes a big impression on young viewers. -Tom Keogh.

French documentarian Pierre Schoendorffer served as a combat soldier in Vietnam in the 1950s during France's quagmire. In the fall of 1966, he returned with a cameraman and spent six weeks with an American infantry platoon. This film, which won a 1968 Best Foreign Documentary Oscar, is stark and riveting. Commanded by a West Point graduate, Lieutenant Joseph Anderson, the 33-man platoon Schoendorffer traveled with was a cross-section of America. Perhaps as the film was shot relatively early in the war, the soldiers still seem motivated and even naive, though it seems to be dawning on everyone that their task may well be hopeless. Exhausting patrols to hunt the Viet Cong turn up nothing but deserted camps, and at one point when the platoon is taking heavy gunfire, you can hear an American yelling that he can't tell where the shooting is coming from. Schoendorffer refrains from making any political statements and offers only the most minimal narration to the black-and-white footage, none of which appears to have been staged for the camera. When the body of a young soldier killed in an ambush is loaded aboard a helicopter, the pain of the scene is palpable. At one point the platoon is shown getting a detailed briefing on a mission, only to have the plans abruptly change and the helicopters drop them into a battle where they have virtually no idea what their role is supposed to be. The Anderson Platoon doesn't tell you, it shows you, and this remarkable film resonates deeply. [+]

The most surreal aspect of this adaptation of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe is how faithful Surrealist director Luis Bunuel is to the original book! Which is not to say it's sluggish or literary-Bunuel recreates the story with lush scenery and vivid images, as if he himself were discovering the tropical island along with the Englishman shipwrecked in 1659. Crusoe (Daniel O'Herlihy, later to appear in RoboCop) spends 28 years building a home and struggling to maintain his sanity; only a friendship formed with a former cannibal whom he dubs Friday (Jaime Fernandez) breaks his isolation. Bunuel (Un Chien Andalou, Belle De Jour, That Obscure Object of Desire) hews scrupulously to even the most colonial aspects of the original material. Crusoe's original expedition set out to trade slaves, and when Crusoe first meets Friday, he introduces himself as "Master" and comments, "How pleasant it was once more to have a servant. " But moments of puckish humor-such as a theological debate in which Friday questions the emotional stability of God-reveal that Bunuel was hardly blind to these issues. Bunuel's sharp eye results in a straightforward but superb version of the classic adventure story. The dvd has a small handful of extras, including an extensive audio interview with O'Herlihy (who was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance), in which he reminisces about Orson Welles and reveals that though the movie is in English, Bunuel never spoke it and O'Herlihy had to learn Spanish so he could take direction. -Bret Fetzer.