It could have been the sappiest of soap operas. Eighteen-year-old Meg (Agnes Bruckner) is shattered by her father's desertion, her mother's neglect and her sister's self-mutiliation. Meg leans on Mr. Auster (David Strathairn), the married English teacher and father figure who encourages her to enter a poetry contest. At the finals in Florida, mentor and student blunder into a brutal sexual intimacy.

The weepie pitfalls are avoided thanks to Karen Moncrieff, a first-time writer and director with a tough core of intelligence and wit. Strathairn works miracles by finding the humanity in a deeply flawed man. And Bruckner is an amazement, piercing the heart without begging for sympathy. This small gem of a movie is the perfect setting for her breakthrough performance.

“Everyday People”

"Everyday People" managed to trailblaze in two different ways -- it was one of the first pop hits to deal with the subject of racial harmony, and it utilized Larry Graham's "slap" technique on the bass guitar, which would soon be copied by countless other bassists. Graham once said about his pulsating style, "I'd never done that before … that's where the freedom of creativity came in for the band, that we'd be allowed to do that." In 1978, the song's line "Different strokes for different folks" would be borrowed for the title of the hit television show Diff'rent Strokes.