True story: six months before Richard Nixon resigned, in 1974, screw-up husband, father and salesman Samuel Byck tried to take him out, in a prescient 9/11 scenario, by hijacking a jet and crashing it into the White House.

Byck failed but died trying. This prototypical little-guy loser felt betrayed by his family, his job and his country. He viewed Tricky Dick as the symbol of his torment. First-time director and co-writer Niels Mueller saw Byck (called Bicke to allow for fictional finagling) as a means to investigate the psychological underpinings of the American dreamer betrayed. It's a fierce and noble quest that Mueller doesn't quite pull off.

No matter. The reliably brilliant Sean Penn does. Penn gets the look right (the mustache, the polyester suits) and the halting speech. But the beauty of this astonishing performance, a worthy follow-up to his Oscar role in Mystic River, is the way Penn finds the loneliness that isolates Bicke from his waitress wife (Naomi Watts), his friend (Don Cheadle), his boss (Jack Thompson), his brother (a superb Michael Wincott) and, ultimately, the world. It isn't easy to watch Bicke deteriorate into madness — this riveting film qualifies as the anti-crowd-pleaser — but Penn makes it unthinkable to turn away.

“(We're Not) The Jet Set”

George Jones and Tammy Wynette were still married when they recorded the tongue-in-cheek "(We're Not) The Jet Set." The lyrics, written by Nashville songwriter Bobby Braddock, who also penned Wynette's "D-I-V-O-R-C-E" and Jones' "He Stopped Loving Her Today," make fun of the good life by declaring, "We're not the Jet Set/We're the old Chevrolet set." Braddock recalled that while writing the song, he needed the name of a city that evened out the rhyme he had with "Riviera" and "Missourah." “I got out a Rand McNally atlas," he said. "In the first part are the maps. The last part is an alphabetical listing of cities. I wanted a rustic, small-time sound. I went to the listing for Missouri. And I found 'Festus.' I loved the sound of it."