Even the best actors — and I'd rank Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Ruffalo among their generation's finest — can't save a movie that aims for tragedy but stalls at soap opera. Directed by Terry George from a novel by John Burnham Schwartz, the film concerns a hit-and-run that shatters two families. Phoenix plays the father who sees a car slam into his ten-year-old son. Ruffalo is the driver who flees the scene and hides his trail when the child dies. Jennifer Connelly and Mira Sorvino portray wives caught in the crossfire. By the time the grieving father picks up a gun, you know exactly where the film is headed. The foreboding weighs a ton.

“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.